Cena_markTechnology revealing to to the masses what blacks have endured for decades. Nothing pisses me off like the sheltered white dude saying, "Just be polite to the police and you won't get trouble."

Old_ZirconThere are ten units in my apartment. Last time there was some shooting nearby, as soon as the cops showed up ALMOST ALL THE WHITE PEOPLE IN MY BUILDING RAN OUTSIDE TO TALK TO THEM even though it had nothing to do with our building at all. It was like a textbook case.

jfcaron_caWhy are police body cameras not required to be on 100% of the time? The officers should have nothing to worry about if they are following all the rules and being "one of the good ones".

There are plenty of mainstream cameras that output compressed video and even at 1080p you could record a whole 8 hour shift in under 400GB, which isn't a massive amount these days. You can buy a 512GB flash card on amazon for not insane money.

The only concern would be battery life, but I imagine it's still doable since very small cameras like gopros can last about two hours recording HD video at 30fps with gps and wifi as well.

It's very doable to have a camera that records HD video for a whole 8 hours.

in terms of storing all that data and not having petabytes of video of boring cop shit, cameras could be equipped with a flag toggle for cops to turn on to mark video that's relevant. After a set time on a server you'd delete everything that isn't flagged. (for extra shits-n-giggles add in a feature that flags a random amount of time before the flag switch is turned on)

You could also have that flag switch change recording modes for the camera...say in normal mode it records standard definition video at lower FPS and then with the flag on it goes into HD recording at higher FPS, maybe even with raw video.

We're in the fucking future now, man. we can do amazing shit now. We just don't because we don't want to pay for it and/or there's profit to be made in half-assing things and scamming tax payers. (police are paying around a thousand dollars each for body cameras, and I'd bet as much that most of them are the cheapest Chinese no-brand components in a "ruggedized" case)

Old_ZirconI agree, I'm saying data storage (and hardware cost of the cameras themselves) is an issue that would be used to argue against it.

Monkey NapoleonOutfitting police (or really any group of people working in shifts) with consumer-grade wearable electronics is a recipe for flushing sooooo much money down the toilet.

And it's not just the portable storage you have to worry about, either. You're going to either have to pay people whose sole job it is to review entire shifts of guys hotboxing their cruisers with their farts and checking out milfs in parking lots, or you going to have to permanently store all the video in case something ever comes up later. The infrastructure for either of those things is not within the budget of any police department.

I can't help but feel like the solution to this kind of thing is to put that money into getting better cops, not accepting corruption and increasing the ever growing menace of surveillance. Any tool you give to police that costs them money, you can be sure they're going to want to see a return out of it.

memedumpsterIt wont be cheaper to bust the police union and prosecute the police in all the major cities in all 50 states, then vet actual humans to replace them. Monitoring them and auditing them is not only cheaper, but feasible. I think looking for potential "good cops" is like looking for a nuclear warhead to fight cancer. Like radiation used on cancer, law and order can prolong the life of your society, but there's no reason to believe an ICBM is a form of therapy any more than a cop is a component of justice.

Law enforcement is the people preventing authority from victimizing us, cops only play the role of aggressor.

And just like how the NSA stores this and every communication on earth, they can store murdercop live tv too.

jfcaron_caAre there any groups of citizens that have taken to wearing body cameras? Let the cops dishonestly argue about why it's a hassle, and just film THEM instead.

If we're gonna not have any privacy anyways, we might as well benefit from its erasure.

Robin Kestrel"Baltimore Police Department body cameras record and preserve footage from the last 30 seconds before they are activated, according to the department's body-worn camera policy." Whoops!

I'm sure looking for better people has merit. Hell, the cops are so far into criminal syndicate territory that I don't think it's hyperbole to say that citizens with cameras are pretty much default better cops and a more legitimate civil authority.

Nap and SolRo and OZ is a good cop. I'd be your talking ghost dog sidekick any day. Or a t-rex.